“New Social Power in China” read one 2004 cover of Economics, a Beijing-based magazine. The reference cited the work of domestic environmental groups that oppose the building of massive dams in the country. These nongovernmental organizations—along with others that militate on environmental, public health and legal issues—have begun to serve as a vital counterpoint to the government's otherwise unchecked push to propel the nation's blisteringly fast-paced economic development. The NGOs have become a new force for political activism in China's post-Tiananmen era.
They survive by not confronting the government directly but by adopting more subtle paths to social change. “Environmental NGOs... play a critical role in advancing transparency, rule of law and official accountability within the Chinese political system,” noted Elizabeth C. Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations at a hearing before the U.S. Congress this past February. “Through this process, they have become a significant force for political reform.”
Green Watershed, a Chinese NGO dedicated to river management issues, has organized peasants in the province of Yunnan to protect wetlands and to oppose dam construction. There government projects have threatened the ability of farmers and fishers, many of them ethnic minorities, to earn a living. The group has waged a successful campaign to suspend one plan to build 13 dams on the Nu River, which slices through remote gorges in Yunnan. The government had announced the project in 2003, weeks after UNESCO named the surrounding area a World Heritage site. In the summer of 2004 the group made an underground documentary about the poor living conditions of peasants located near the 12-year-old Manwan dam, touted by the government as a paragon of development.
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The organizer of the group, Yu Xiaogang, is an environmental scientist and a Communist Party member who illustrates the ambivalent relationship the government has with these groups. A competition organized by several government agencies chose his group as one of the top 10 examples of sustainable development within China for its work on preserving the Lashi watershed. More recently, police have confiscated his passport and prohibited him from leaving China.
The emergence of environmental NGOs in China is a new phenomenon dating only to 1994, when the government gave permission to establish independent organizations that survive typically without government funding. The first group to take advantage was Friends of Nature, which has adopted positions on issues such as preserving the golden snub-nosed monkey and the Tibetan antelope.
Seventy-three-year-old Liang Congjie, a former history professor who founded the group, continues to speak out about the environmental price paid to pursue development of the economy. Some of Liang's oft-cited remarks throw cold water on the Chinese economic miracle. “If Chinese wanted to live like Americans, we would need the resources of four worlds to do so,” he has said.
Although Friends of Nature often collaborates with the government, the relationship can still be a tenuous one. In 2002 the government gave Friends of Nature an ultimatum: expel Wang Li-xiong or shut its doors. Wang is one of the group's founding board members and was a supporter of two Tibetan monks who faced execution. Such tensions may establish a dynamic that delineates the pathway to political as well as environmental reform.
